Melanie Phillips
Melanie Phillips is a British journalist and author. She is best known for her controversial columns on political and social issues Awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism in 1996, she is the author of All Must Have Prizes, Londonistan and several other books. Styled a conservative by her opponents, she prefers to think of herself as defending authentic liberal values against the attempt to destroy western culture from within.
By all accounts the Stand With Us people were entirely peaceful and unaggressive. Suddenly, as the JC reports, the atmosphere turned sour:
‘About four or five people were standing around Gili, Ro'i Goldman, and the fourth member of our group. One man began to say some extremely unpleasant things about Jews. He said that the best thing the Jews had ever done was to go into the gas chambers. He [the fourth activist] asked if he could film him. The man said yes, adding that “these things should be heard.”’Another man then came forward and told the abusive man that he did not have to be filmed or interviewed. Despite the abusive man agreeing to be filmed, Mr Coren said, the second man, who was ‘big and burly and of Middle East appearance,’ allegedly launched himself at the activist, grabbing at his camera, punching him and then biting him on the cheek.‘There was a struggle and the university security guards came out. A number of other people then began to say we shouldn’t be there. The president of the union came out and said we had made our point. A policeman strongly advised us to leave.’Ro’i Goldman, who plans to study in the UK next year, said he was very shocked by the experience. But Tony Coren said he was not shocked, but was angry that the university authorities had indicated that by their very presence, the protesters had possibly provoked the attack.
Ah yes, that last bit rings so very true. To the university authorities – as so often with the British police – it’s not the intimidatory and violent anti-Israel thugs who are the problem, but their victims – just because they exist at all. For this is how the thinking seems to go: because the Jews won’t resort to violence however badly they are provoked, the thugs who intimidate them aren’t a problem; but because the sight of peaceful pro-Israel groups may provoke the Israel-bashers to violent disorder, it’s the very existence of the defenders of Israel which is the problem.
This kind of moral inversion, plus the usual politically correct paralysis not to mention blind funk, helps explain why the university authorities in charge of SOAS have allowed their institution to become the epicentre of campus anti-Israel bigotry and intimidation in London. And they are certainly not alone among universities which for years have refused to deal with the incitement to hatred against Israel and the Jewish people and recruitment to Islamic extremism taking place on their campuses – including Hate Israel Week, the annual festival of bigotry and lies which shows how totally these trembling bureaucrats have betrayed the ideal of a university as a temple of enlightenment and learning.
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